In most people's minds there is no scarier diagnosis than that of cancer. Cancer is often thought of as an untreatable, unbearably painful disease with no cure. However popular this view of cancer may be, it is exaggerated and over-generalized. Cancer is undoubtedly a serious and potentially life-threatening illness. According to World Health Organization (WHO) statistics, cancers figure among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, with approximately 8.2 million cancer related deaths in 2012, and the number of new cases expected to rise by about 70% over the next two decades. However, it is a misconception to think that all forms of cancer are untreatable and deadly. The truth of the matter is that there are multiple types of cancer, many of which can today be effectively treated so as to eliminate, reduce or slow the impact of the disease on patients' lives. While a diagnosis of cancer may still leave patients feeling helpless and out of control, in ma...

What are the causes of cancer?

The causes of cancer are not fully understood, but years of research have brought to light risk factors that increase people's chances of getting particular types of cancer.

Some of these risk factors are unable to be avoided, while others can be avoided by choosing to live a healthy lifestyle.

For example, smoking cigarettes is an avoidable risk factor. Changing your lifestyle to get rid of unhealthy choices such as smoking can be difficult to accomplish (tobacco is an addictive drug and stopping smoking means beating that addiction), but the rewards are real.

Stopping smoking and similar healthy lifestyle changes will not insure that you never get cancer, but they will reduce your cancer risk.

This is true whether you have never had cancer before, or if you have previously beaten cancer and are wondering what you can do to reduce your chances of relapse.

Each specific type of cancer is different and consequently has a different set of associated risk factors.

What are the stages of cancer?

Following a positive identification of cancer, doctors will try to establish the stage of the cancer.

Cancers are ranked into stages depending on the specific characteristics that they possess; stages correspond with severity.

Determining the stage of a given cancer helps doctors to make treatment recommendations, to form a likely outcome scenario for what will happen to the patient (prognosis), and to communicate effectively with other doctors.

There are multiple staging scales in use.

One of the most common ranks cancers into five progressively more severe stages: 0, I, II, III, and IV. Stage 0 cancer is cancer that is just beginning, involving just a few cells. Stages I, II, III, and IV represent progressively more advanced cancers, characterized by larger tumor sizes, more tumors, the aggressiveness with which the cancer grows and spreads, and the extent to which the cancer has spread to infect adjacent tissues and body organs.

Another popular staging system is known as the TNM system, a three dimensional rating of cancer extensiveness. Using the TNM system, doctors rate the cancers they find on each of three scales, where T stands for tumor size, N stands for lymph node involvement, and M stands for metastasis (the degree to which cancer has spread beyond its original locations). Larger scores on each of the three scales indicate more advanced cancer.

Still another staging system, called summary staging, is in use by the National Cancer Institute for its SEER program. Summary stages include: "In situ" or early cancer (stage 0 cancer), "localized" cancer which has not yet begun to spread, "regional" cancer which has spread to local lymph nodes but not yet to distant organs, "distant" cancer which has spread to distant organs, and finally, "unknown" cancer to describe anything not fitting elsewhere.

What are treatments for cancer?

Treatments vary based on the type, location, and size of the cancer being treated, as well as patient's age, medical history, and overall health.

Each form of cancer is different and calls for a different set of treatment approaches.

Chemotherapy and radiation therapy are two common approaches used to treat almost all types of cancer.

Chemotherapy is commonly used for patients whose cancer has possibly spread to various locations in the body. It can be used to reduce cancer symptoms and pain, and to slow the growth of cancerous tumors.

Chemotherapy uses a powerful combination of drugs that are either taken by mouth or injected directly into the bloodstream to target cells in the body that divide and grow quickly and are usually able to destroy these cells.

Chemotherapy drugs also kill some regular healthy cells causing side effects such as fatigue, nausea, and hair loss.

Radiation therapy is most commonly used to treat cancer that has not spread from its original location.

The goal of radiation therapy is to kill cancer cells or at least limit their ability to grow and divide by damaging their genetic material.

Like chemotherapy, some normal, healthy cells can also become damaged through radiation therapy.